Regrets
by Mirandabelle
Summary: BJ's story up. We all know he missed Erin very much, but just how bad did he miss her?
1. 7 Months and 18 Days: Margaret's Story

I shouldn't be here. I had all morning to escape this, when you think about it, I had 7 months and 18 days to run, but I'm here, holding tight to a little girl's hand as she watches her brave, brave daddy carry the coffin that her mother is in.  
  
I wish I could just run away from it, but I can't, I had all morning to avoid this, but now that I'm here I can't let little Erin down. She needs me, BJ needs me, and he's my friend so I can't run away from that.  
  
I'm not family, I barely knew Peggy I don't need to be here, comforting her daughter and husband. I have no right to be at a funeral for a woman I hardly knew. If I have no right though, would BJ have asked me for help 7 months and 18 days ago?  
  
7 months and 18 days ago, life was normal, but then I got a call from BJ, so scared and worried. 7 months and 18 days ago I boarded a plane to California, and arrived in Mill Valley. 7 months and 18 days ago, I found out Peggy Honnicut had cancer.  
  
7 months and 18 days ago I agreed to nurse her, help around the house and generally look after the family in the lady of the house's waning health. I shouldn't have said yes, but as I looked into little Erin's swimming eyes, 7 months and 18 days ago I had to say I would.  
  
I should have left 7 days ago, when Peggy finally closed her eyes, with her husband's lips on hers, with her daughter clasping her hand and with her personal nurse, Margaret Houlihan, me, feeling her pulse as it faded. I should have left the same day, but fate has kept me here, and my newfound love for the Honnicut family.  
  
I still shouldn't be here, my help could only last as long as Peggy was alive, while I nursed her, but now that's she's gone I shouldn't be staying with BJ and Erin, comforting them, cleaning up and cooking. I shouldn't be at the funeral, I had all morning to choose not to come, but now that I'm here, what can I do?  
  
I hold tight to Erin's hand, dry my eyes and join BJ at the graveside. His hand finds mine, searching for warmth and sympathy. I give it everything I have, squeezing his slim hand, and he raises the clasped fist to his lips, kissing it, silently thanking me for the 7months and 18 days of support.  
  
"Will you stay with us and help me raise Erin? We all love your company. Please?" BJ asks and I know there is nothing romantic about it, just a friend asking a friend for help. I know shouldn't say it, but as I look into the swimming eyes of little Erin I know I have to.  
  
"I will BJ." 


	2. Just Blind: Trapper's Story

That choice I made, was the worst choice of my life. That one mistake cost me everything I had, my wife, my daughters, my sight and thus, my career. How can a blind surgeon operate?  
  
I was so stupid, I guess I was too happy to care about the consequences. I didn't know or care at the time that that one mistake would take away everything that I loved so dearly.  
  
I chose to get into the car, and I chose to start the engine. I chose to tell Louise that I was sober enough to drive. I chose let her and the girls get into the car. I chose to try and drive us all home even though I knew I was so drunk I could hardly stand.  
  
I was the one who swerved across the road and onto the railway lines. I was the one who heard Kathy's frightened scream as the train hit us. I was the one who held Lou's hand as she died in the mangled wreck. I was the one that sat beside little Becky as her tiny body lost its battle with life. I was the one who made it out alive.  
  
I thought I regretted being in Korea, but I will regret that crash forever. It started out with me being blind drunk, but now I'm just blind. 


	3. War Wounds Like You've Never Seen: Hawks

They say that time heals all wounds. They don't know what they're on about. They know that with time, visual wounds like a scar will heal but they don't know that if time really does heal the emotional wounds it would heal the wounds so deep that you will remember that one moment when you were wounded so badly forever.  
  
I'm back from the Korean 'police-action' and I'm back in Crabapple Cove. I'm back where I was born, and I'm back in the house where I grew up. But I wish that I was back the way I was before I was in Korea.  
  
I have wounds. War wounds. War wounds like you've never seen, like you've never felt, like you've never imagined. They're not from a bullet, or shrapnel oh no, they run deeper than a wound so easily fixed by a doctor. You can't even see them, even if I were to stand before you, totally naked you still couldn't see the scars and the wounds. They're emotional.  
  
Everyone who was in Korea in those years has wounds. But no one has exactly the same wounds as I do. No one has the exact same wounds as anybody. You can only imagine what another suffers even if you were there.  
  
No one who was there in that OR when Radar gave that message felt precisely how I did. Not even Trapper felt the exact same hideous pain and unfairness when we heard Henry had died. No one else had the urge to throw up when the woman smothered her baby on that bus. No one else felt the guilt I did when Radar lay there, his chest and shoulder oozing blood. No one else knows what I feel.  
  
These wounds remind me everyday of how cruel, inhumane, unfair, unjust, and evil war is. It makes me feel sick, sad, angry and so helpless knowing there's nothing I could do to stop it. Sometimes it's so bad, it comes in my sleep and I wake up trembling, scared. Other times I just cry and cry. Then the rage hits and I yell and swear and throw things. I can't help how the wounds make me feel, nor can I help how they make me act.  
  
I try to explain to people why I am like I am and why I do what I do, but they don't listen. They assume we're all the same, mentally weary victims of the war. They assume these things because they don't know and they don't understand. Because they weren't there, they weren't in my shoes.  
  
These wounds, these war wounds like you've never seen will run through me forever and there's little you can do to change it. All you can do is accept them, listen to me when I tell you about them, don't jump to conclusions and remember that you can't see them. 


	4. Maybe: Charles's Story

A/N: Here's the next story, sorry I took ages getting it up. This is for Karen! This has a very low Kleenex warning, I can't guarantee you'll cry over this. I didn't.  
  
My sleep is plagued by nightmares from that god-forsaken war. I cannot sleep, and if I cannot sleep I cannot operate. And if the Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Boston Mercy cannot operate, what use is he? Maybe if I had someone to talk to I might be able to sleep.  
  
I wonder how my colleagues Pierce and Honnicut are doing; maybe they have nightmares too. Maybe they'd understand. But why would they help? They've previously refused any offer of hospitality from me, why would they come now? Understandably the birth of Honnicut's second child would prevent him from visiting, but still when I telephoned Pierce and offered him a weekend at Cape Cod with my sister and I, he refused, simply because he did not want to come. Maybe it was because of how I treated him in Korea.  
  
Maybe if I'd been more of a friend and less of a colleague to them they might want to visit. I know now that I looked down my nose at them and it was understandable. I still have yet to see such a pair of rude, immature goons such as Pierce and Honnicut. But maybe if I had been more understanding about their rebelling towards the army, they might have come when I needed them  
  
Maybe isn't getting me anywhere, I wasn't their friend then, and they are not my friends now. I shall go for a walk, try and clear my mind. And maybe, just maybe I can sleep. . . 


	5. All Grown Up: BJ's story

A/N: This is BJ's regret, and let me tell you, it didn't come easy. I had a hard time coming up with something that BJ might regret. However, I hope you enjoy it.  
  
All Grown Up  
  
Look at her; she's so beautiful, the very image of her mother. Floating down the aisle, to the arms of another man, to leave this church no longer a Miss Erin Patricia Honnicut, but a Mrs Isaac Robert Pierce. And not even the Pierce I would have liked, my new son-in-law is no relation to Hawkeye. She was my baby, and now look at her, she's all grown up, the only threads that kept us together, gone.  
  
Perhaps I wouldn't take this so hard if I had loved her more, maybe I could have felt joy in giving her away to Isaac, an active interest in my daughter when she was younger would have made this so much easier.  
  
We had slipped so far apart when I came back from Korea, I didn't know how to hold her or what her favourite songs were, or what her baby-talk meant, and she didn't know or even like me, she'd scream blue murder until she was back with Peggy, and every time I was near her, she'd eye me with distrust. So, naively I let Peggy take over, hoping that in time, Erin would get used to the strange man, her Daddy.  
  
I was wrong, Erin and I slipped further apart, when she was five, it was not me she ran to when she grazed her knee, but Peggy who hated blood, and when she got first prize in the spelling bee when she was 7, Grandma knew before I did, and I had picked her up from school that day. By the time Erin was 10, I was just a person, whom she rarely spoke to and never touched, and introduced to her friends as 'my father'. About Erin's 12th birthday, we stopped talking, there was never any anger or resentment, we just never had the need to talk.  
  
In Erin's teenage years, things came to hurt the most when I realised that she was growing up, and that I had been oblivious to 90% of it and excluded from the other 10. So on her 18th birthday, my gift was thirteen words, written on a pretty card, "I love you Erin Honnicut, I always have, and I always will, Daddy" It broke the ice that had formed years earlier when I left for Korea. We began to talk again, not much, just letters scribbled between her classes or my patients, and finally a promise to spend a day together, father and daughter once more. However, her life was too busy to fit to my schedule, and my life was too busy to fit to hers, and before the day when she and Isaac announced their marriage, Erin and I never had our day alone.  
  
And that is the reason I stand here, watching my only child get married. A child I barely knew, and will now probably never get to know. The only time I remember her as mine is the first time I held her, just a red-faced, vulnerable, naked baby, needing her daddy's protection, and now look at her, kissing her new husband for the first time, she's all grown up. 


End file.
